‘Shebeens’ remain a refuge for poverty-stricken South Africans

Minky Maniawuli (left), Phumla Mphati and Phumla Sigeni are all unemployed single mothers who believe the grim situation of black South Africans is about to get worse.

Photograph by: Matthew Fisher / Postmedia News
, Postmedia News

SOWETO, South Africa — The power had been out for three days so there was no music and most of the apple cider and beer was warm, but the party was in full swing by early Saturday afternoon at Dodo’s Tavern, an unlicensed shebeen that is the centre of community life in a wretchedly poor area of the biggest black township in South Africa.

Nearly 20 years after Nelson Mandela ended apartheid, the iconic statesman is cherished and venerated in this informal settlement of squatter shacks and small houses known as Nomzamo Park. Some blacks have prospered since the end of apartheid and more people than ever before are getting an education, but millions of blacks in the townships and rural areas remain trapped in poverty with few prospects, just as they were before they got the vote which they used to elect Mandela as their president.

Most of Dodo’s patrons, seated on shabby plastic chairs swigging Redd’s Cider and Quebec-sized bottles of Carling Black Label and Castle Draft, said that they were worse off than ever. But there was unanimity that their lives could get even worse after 94-year-old Mandela, who has been seriously ill in hospital since June 8, is no longer around to inspire them.

The fear, openly expressed by everyone in the crowded shebeen, was that nobody except Mandela had the authority to keep South Africa’s many black and white tribes at peace. It was one of many reasons, they claimed, why they frequently sought refuge and solace in drinking.

“Older people buy alcohol and stay home but we prefer come here,” said regular Phumla Singeni, a 30-year-old unemployed single mother of one who quickly worked her way through two large bottles of Hansa Pilsener, before spelling out the grim budget numbers she worked with.

“I spend about 250 rand a week (about $25) on drink,” she said. “That is about one-third of the money the government gives me. I do this because I’m depressed. About half of the people in Nomzamo Park don’t have a job and almost nobody with a job has a well paying one.

“If I was employed I wouldn’t be here, but what else is there for me to do but come here on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. We feel shut out of everything.”

After sitting stonefaced and silent for several hours beside Singeni, her close friend, Minky Maniawuli, 34, who was also a solo mum, joined the conversation with her similarly bleak outlook.

“I’m not working. I am always sitting,” she said. “I was a cleaner once but that contract ended years ago. I apply and apply for work but I get nothing. I only have a few years of schooling. They always want more than that and there is no way for me to get qualifications now.”

Eighteen-year-old Lubabalo Babinewadi said he had a carpenter’s certificate but had never been paid for any work since dropping out of school when he was 13.

“I followed my mother here from the Eastern Cape three years ago because she had work, but every gate I go to says they have no jobs,” Babinewadi said.

Although older folk told him that he was being unrealistic he said, “I see myself as having a beautiful wife and home in a few years. That’s what I want.”

William Maso was “one of the lucky ones.” He earns about $350 a month as a security driver in Johannesburg. Transport to and from his place of employment — a two-hour daily commute — cost him $60. About twice a month he dropped by the shebeen, where he spent about $50, leaving him with about $240 to support his wife and two children.

“For me the big issue is what happens after Mandela,” he said. “The biggest tribes, the Xhosas and Zulus are united at the moment, but everything will change. To avoid trouble this must be discussed openly,” Maso said.

Two weeks earlier there had been a murder in a drunken brawl in a nearby shebeen. But Dodo’s, whose customers include Xhosas, Zulus, Shangaans, Sothos, Pedis, Tswanas and Vendas, was considered safe, particularly for women, because of its kindly owner, Zingisice Golimpi.

“Running such a business isn’t easy in Soweto because the local government won’t give me a licence because this is a government-built home in a residential area,” Golimpi said as he hauled in several crates of beer. “The police come and take my money and alcohol and arrest me all the time until I pay the ($15) fine. I keep the shebeen going because it a great place for people to meet and to have peace of mind. They need it.”

Dressed against the southern winter’s cold in a white parka and a thick black sweater, Phumla Singeni, around whom much of the social clamour in Dodo’s seemed to revolve, agreed.

“This is my favourite shebeen. It’s where I am comfortable. My friends are here,” she said of a room perhaps seven metres by seven metres with dirty white walls, two metal tables with heavily chipped paint and sacks of cement piled high in one corner.

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